It's GOOD

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Unfortunately, when it's your own beauty you're judging, the beholder can be pretty critical. As part of their Real Beauty campaign, Dove hired a FBI sketch artist to prove that women are much more beautiful than they give themselves credit for.

For even more, watch the whole experience at: http://dove.com/realbeautysketches. Also use #wearebeautiful to join in!

This campaign is quite feel-good, but it also left me very uncomfortable. This writer, Jazzy Little Drops, expressed why perfectly: "When it comes to the diversity of the main participants: all four are Caucasian, three are blonde with blue eyes, all are thin, and all are young (the oldest appears to be 40). The majority of the non-featured participants are thin, young white women as well. Hmm… probably a little limiting, wouldn’t you say? We see in the video that at least three black women were in fact drawn for the project. Two are briefly shown describing themselves in a negative light (one says she has a fat, round face, and one says she’s getting freckles as she ages). Both women are lighter skinned. A black man is shown as one of the people describing someone else, and he comments that she has “pretty blue eyes”. One Asian woman is briefly shown looking at the completed drawings of herself and you see the back of a black woman’s head; neither are shown speaking. Out of 6:36 minutes of footage, people of color are onscreen for less than 10 seconds."

The author goes on to note that "it kinda seems to be enforcing our very narrow cultural perception of “beauty”: young, light-skinned, thin. No real diversity celebrated in race, age, or body shape."

this video brought tears to my eyes, so many women and girls hold a negative perception of the face they show to the world...my first rule~SMILE, my second~love yourself and carry that with you throughout your day!

This is touching, yes, but it's also very problematic. We should be stressing confidence in girls and women that ISN'T based on physical appearance. It may be moving that "beauty" is, as one of the women says, "critical to our happiness," but that's not the way it has to be.

Also, the features in the sketches are less defined, softer. Are we supposed to take being closer to the "average" as more beautiful? Why can't someone have a strong jaw or long nose and be beautiful?

What this tells me as a woman is "oh, your nose might not be as big as you think," when it really should say "this big nose is just as beautiful as this small nose."